A Task-Based Theory of Information Services
Lars Mathiassen, Carsten Sørensen · 2002
Abstract: The past 30 years we have studied the relationship between the use of information and communication technology (ICT) and organisational performance under names such as Information Systems, Management Information Systems, and Group Decision Support Systems. There has, however, as pointed out by Orlikowski & Iacono (2001), been little work promoting theories about the ICT artefact. The aim of this paper is to continue where Orlikowski & Iacono left and suggest a task-based theory of information services. The theory distinguishes between computational, adaptive, networking and collaborative services and relates these ideal types of services to basic types of technologies, such as server, client, infrastructure and workspace technologies. We also discuss how different types of services standardise process, information, connection and material and we argue that their use can lead to unintended dysfunctionality in terms of structure, information, interaction and transaction overload.